Tom Cruise fights through a muddy plot in Jack Reacher

There are times when one’s enjoyment and engagement in a movie can be sidelined by the power of its star. Screen presence, rugged facial features and the unmistakable timbre of voice combine to remind you that you’re watching someone famous playing someone else.

I’m referring of course to Werner Herzog’s role in Jack Reacher, which I think also stars Tom Cruise. Herzog is an occasional actor, though much better known for gripping documentaries such as Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, in which he provides narration in his inimitable (though that doesn’t stop people from trying) Bavarian baritone.

Herzog plays a criminal mastermind known as The Zec, which everyone in the movie instantly translates as Prisoner. He first pops up 46 minutes into the film. “We make it messy now so it won’t get messy later, and we don’t leave qvestions unanswered,” he tells one of his thuggish underlings. Yes, he says “qvestions.” He also explains that he once chewed off his own fingers before frostbite could set in. Take that, Javier Bardem!

Cruise makes a much earlier (and less dramatic) appearance in the film, which opens with a long, discomfiting scene of a sniper picking off random passersby from across Pittsburgh’s Allegheny River. When the shooter, an Army veteran, is brought in for questioning, he demands to see Jack Reacher, whom police detective Emerson (David Oyelowo) describes as a ghost.

Fortunately for the plot (which is already starting to drag) the ghost shows up, Hamlet-style, to help convict the man. But he starts to wonder if maybe the guy is innocent after all. Any connection to the fact that the defence lawyer is played by Rosamund Pike is probably coincidental.

Speaking of coincidence, Pittsburgh’s district attorney (Richard Jenkins) turns out to be Pike’s father, a twist I can reveal since the movie makes no attempt to hide it. She’s determined to break her old man’s unbroken streak of death-row convictions.

Jack Reacher is based on the 2005 novel One Shot by Lee Child. It’s been adapted and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, though he clearly skipped the bit where Reacher is described as 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds. Cruise still make a formidable action hero, however, and in one bone-crunching scene he beats up a bad guy with another bad guy. He’s also a master of the pre-hit quip, and likes to taunt his attackers before turning the tables on them.

The film thus has all the ingredients for a franchise-starter, but the proportions are all wrong. The score swings clumsily between silence and portent, and Cruise and Pike don’t have chemistry as much as proximity — he stands really close to her on more than one occasion, and she gets all flustered. (Special effects make Cruise look taller than the willowy Pike.)

In the end, neither Cruise’s line readings nor Herzog’s weirdness can save the picture, which plods along in 130 minutes. (Hey, just because it’s Oscar season doesn’t mean all the films need to top two hours!) There’s some nice cinematography in the car-chase scenes, and a third-act appearance by Robert Duvall as a guy named Cash, which may also be why he took the part.

The film wants us to wonder: Was the shooter set up? All this audience member could manage was: Were we?